At the very beginning of his System of Liberty, Luigi Pareyson observes, not without irony, that the problem of the evolution of Fichte’s thought has become such an essential issue in Fichtean studies that “a serious understanding of Fichte’s thought can basically be reduced to having an opinion on this problem.”Footnote 1 Indeed, although multiple and various interpretations of Fichte exist, and although the periodization of his work differs from one commentator to another, it remains true that a number of interpretations share the same presupposition: first of all, that a significant change of philosophy did take place, and second, that this change can be expressed as a transition from a doctrine of the finite (consciousness, the subject, the “I”) to a doctrine of the nonfinite or infinite (the absolute, God, Being). In an attempt to overcome this problem inherent to Fichtean studies, let us carry out a simple thought-experiment and put ourselves for a moment in the position of a philosophically novice reader and a neophyte who, to borrow an expression from Pareyson, “does not possess any thorough knowledge of Fichte’s thought” and who naively consults a catalogue of titles of philosophical works. What would this brave novice learn from such a reading? Under the headings “Descartes,” “Leibniz,” “Heidegger,” a wide variety of titles, each more different than the last. Under the heading “Fichte,” broadly this: Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge; The Concept of the Science of Knowledge; The Science of Knowledge nova methodo; The Science of Knowledge of 1801, 1804, 1805, and so on—but also The System of Ethics According to the Science of Knowledge; TheFoundations of Natural RightAccording to the Science of Knowledge. In this case, it is a safe bet that our fortunate stranger to Fichtean studies would hardly think to define Fichte’s theory as a theory of the finite subject or a system of liberty, and even less as a doctrine of God or of the absolute, but would simply describe it as a Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftlehre, literally: Doctrine of Science). It is even more likely that, lacking sufficient knowledge to understand the subtlety of the multiple ruptures introduced by the leading specialists, our novice reader would stick with her initial stupefaction, brought about by the repetition, if not to say the hammering in, of an expression that remains unchanged from one end of Fichte’s work to the other.

This thought-experiment thus urges us to ask the question: What if the expression “Science of Knowledge” were the unifying principle of Fichte’s philosophy? Isn’t this comparable to Edgar Allen Poe’s Purloined Letter, which we search for everywhere while it lies before our very eyes? Why should we assign to the different presentations of Fichte’s doctrines such distinct topics as “doctrine of freedom” or “doctrine of the finite subject” (for 1794), “doctrine of the infinite” (for the 1796/1799 Nova Methodo), or “doctrine of the absolute” (for 1804), when in thus renaming what initially had but a single name, we not only suggest changes and evolution where what strikes us first should rather be the permanence of an expression, but we also surreptitiously confer upon the term “science” (Lehre: doctrine) a transitive dimension (so that the “science” is a doctrine of something: freedom, the finite subject, God, or the absolute). Against this imposed transitiveness, Fichte constantly tells us that the expression “Science of Knowledge” (Wissenschaftlehre) can only be taken reflectively and understood precisely as “the science of science.”Footnote 2

Now let us suppose that our novice reader goes beyond the mere titles of Fichte’s works and actually ventures into reading the first few pages of each different version of the Wissenschaftslehre. What would he discover? In 1794, the expression “I = I”; in 1798, the phrase “identity of the thinking and the thought”; in 1801, the expression “knowledge of knowledge,” which is later specified in 1804 as “pure knowledge in and for itself”; and finally, in 1813, the phrase “the identity of the knowing and the known,” which is immediately defined as the “understanding of understanding.” As we see, each Wissenschaftslehre starts with a proposition that reiterates itself. As such, what should be noticed first and foremost, more than the transition from a certain term to another, is the recurrence of the formulation through which these terms are put forward. This recurrence, and the consistency between the expressions throughout the Wissenschaftslehre, is revealed not so much by the repetition of a certain term, but by the repeated reiterative structure of the formulation itself. Regardless of this reiteration of the first proposition, which echoes with the repetitive nature of a “science of science,” the reader should also note that the very notion of reflection immediately follows the enunciation of the first proposition. The beginning of the presentation of 1794 requires an “abstracting reflection” (WL 93 [GA I/2:255]). In the Wissenschaftslehre of 1801, we find, just a few lines below the position of the “knowledge of knowledge,” the apposition of “the universal knowledge coming to itself in self-knowledge, in reflection” (GA II/6:141). Similarly, in 1804, the first proposition concerning “pure knowledge in and for itself” is said to be obtained “by reflection” (WL1804 28 [GA II/8:20–21]). And finally, the Wissenschaftslehre of 1812 and of 1813 insist on “reflectivity.” Considering only the beginning of each Wissenschaftslehre, we can thereupon rightfully conclude that the Wissenschaftslehre in general is characterized by the following two features: first, it begins with a proposition whose structure is always reiterative and which is invariably thought as an absolute starting point precisely because of this reiteration; and second, it immediately puts forward the term “reflection,” or derivative expressions of the term such as “reflectivity” or “reflexibility.” To understand this consistency therefore is to figure out the central core of Fichte’s philosophy. Accordingly, the question as to what exactly reflection is for Fichte is of tremendous importance. This chapter aims to answer this question by showing, first, how Fichte’s conception of reflection marks a difference with the traditional views on the subject by identifying reflection with the status of the philosopher’s discourse. This issue led Fichte to conceive of philosophy as metaphilosophy. And in the end, this metaphilosophy rests on a single principle, found in every version of the Wissenschaftslehre, which induces a new and unprecedented method of argumentation that Fichte is the first to develop.

The Critique of Kantian Representation

Considering the repeated use of the term “reflection” in Fichte’s work, it is hard not to be surprised, especially in light of the fact that Fichte, from the start, claimed to be Kant’s follower. Indeed, the most frequent term used by Kant is in no way “reflection,” but rather the term “representation.” Kant’s whole philosophy thus can be thought of as an elucidation of representation, understood as the theory of the possible relations occurring between subject and object.Footnote 3 Knowledge (Erkenntnis) is thus defined as a certain kind of bond between representations. This knowledge, understood as a relation settled between two estates, is described exclusively as object-knowledge—that is, in the Kantian context, as knowledge of the phenomenon. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason definitely aimed to provide an account of valid representation (knowledge) in terms of object-relation. Even his Critique of Judgment, despite the fact that it establishes a philosophical use for the term “reflection,” is to be thought of as an elucidation of our relation to objects: the organized object of nature and the beautiful object of art. In a nutshell, what distinguishes representation from reflection in Kant’s philosophy is in no way the fact that the former could be described as a relation to another, whereas the latter would be a relation to oneself. Both representation and reflection are, for Kant, and contrary to the whole philosophical tradition, merely two distinct ways to relate to an object.

Yet this is precisely what Fichte will hold against him in his very first speculative text, the Private Meditations on Elementary Philosophy,Footnote 4 in which Fichte states that the question which should concern philosophy is no longer how representations can relate to an object, even if such an object is thought of in a Kantian fashion as a phenomenon. The question is rather, “How are thoughts able to relate to the action of our mind?” (GA II/3:23). In other words, how can the mind agree with itself? It is such an agreement of the mind with itself that Fichte, from the outset in his text, will name “reflection.” Likewise, when the controversy with Kant is publicly exposed for the first time in 1799, Fichte sums up the dissent between Kant’s critical project and his own doctrine of science by saying, “It is not about the object of judgment, but about the judging subject” (GA III/4:75).

The difference with Kant is thus clear: where the latter was absorbed by the relation (Verhältnis) between two heterogeneous terms, Fichte focuses his attention on the relation (Beziehung) to oneself, as grasped by the term “reflection.” Hence the question arises: In rejecting the Kantian terminology, is Fichte merely returning to the classical meaning of reflection, as it was established by Descartes, Leibniz, or Locke?

The Refusal of the Classical Notion of Reflection

The commonality between the definitions of the concept of “reflection” among philosophers as different as Locke, Descartes, or Leibniz is this: every reflection is thought of as reflecting back to a pre-existing fact. Yet Fichte specifically and explicitly rejects such a definition, for example when he writes, in the Wissenschaftslehre of 1794/1795, “One certainly hears the question proposed: What was I, then, before I came to self-consciousness? The natural reply is: I did not exist at all” (WL 98 [GA I/2:260]). Similarly, at the beginning of his Attempt at a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre (1797–1798), Fichte warns his readership:

You probably harbor in some small corner of your soul the following objection to this claim: Either, “I am supposed to think, but before I can think I have to exist”; or, “I am supposed to think of myself, to direct my thinking back upon to myself, but whatever I am supposed to think or to turn my attention back upon must first exist before it can be thought of or become the object of an act of reverting.” … In the former case, you postulate the independent existence of yourself as the thinking subject; in the latter, the independent existence of yourself as what is to be thought of. (IWL 109 [GA I/4:273])

This sentence negates with extreme precision both the Cartesian model of reflection and the empiricist or psychological model found in Locke. Indeed, Fichte’s “former case” clearly refers to the objectification of the cogito, its substantializing and reification. As we see in his Metaphysical Meditations, Descartes is led to think the reflective movement in terms of a relation between subject and object following a model where x reflects upon y. At the very moment when—abandoning the simple enunciation of the performative: “I am, I exist, whenever it is uttered by me, or conceived in the mind, is necessarily true”Footnote 5—Descartes asks: “But what am I?” he makes of the I an object upon which a questioning subject reflects, thus unavoidably duplicating the I into subject and object. Such a duplication is clearly expressed in the proposition: “I am conscious of myself,” in which an I-subject (“I am conscious”) opposes an I-object (“of myself”). Such a pattern is also clearly expressed in our daily use of language, where the use of reflective pronouns seems to refer to a pre-existing being. It is precisely this process of objectification, going from a subjective act to an objective res, which is criticized by Fichte in his text. On the other hand, the “latter” case described in the passage above refers, broadly speaking, to any attempt to understand reflection from a psychological standpoint. In such a framework, reflection is commonly understood as the ability to take notice of a psychological fact or of a mental state identified as a kind of immediate presence to oneself. We find such a framework exemplified in Locke’s examples: “I feel” and “I know that I feel.” Nonetheless, Fichte explains on several occasions that reflection, on his account, is neither the return to a pre-existing fact,Footnote 6 nor a mere presence to oneself.

With Descartes as with Locke, the subject reflects upon or targets something which will be described as a res for one, and as a psychological “fact” for the other. Since the grip of the I is depicted as aiming toward a pre-existing x, classical reflection reproduces the bipolarity and ambivalence of representation by making of the relation of thought to itself inexorably a relation between two distinct elements. This is precisely what Fichte relentlessly denounces, for instance in his unambiguous remarks in the Wissenschaftslehre of 1801, where he writes: “The issue is not to conceive what you know regarding the object and to grasp your consciousness (i.e., precisely your consciousness of the object) as something subjective, and the object as something objective” (GA II/6:149). In a nutshell, it is out of the question, within the Wissenschaftslehre, to reproduce the bipolarity of subject and object, or to consider reflection as a relation (Verhältnis) between two previously separated terms. Fichte states that it is by no means necessary to seek out an internal eye that would see the object (namely, consciousness, as it becomes objectified in an I-object) in a fashion analogous to the way in which empirical consciousness perceives and, on the ground of such perception, assumes to know. We have further proof of this in the important distinction that Fichte makes, and which literally structures the Wissenschaftslehreof 1794/1795, between the “observer’s perspective,” which consists in considering the relation between two observed objects (e.g., “the magnet and iron” objectified in knowledge), and the philosopher’s perspective, which is introduced as the “reflection upon this reflection” (WL 152 [GA I/2:315]).

But what exactly is the positive meaning of the word “reflection” if, along with the Science of Knowledge, we remove any remnants of a return to a pre-existing x, and if we remove any remaining relation to psychological introspection?

The Issue of the Status of the Philosopher’s Discourse

The development of reflection, from the Private Meditations on ElementaryPhilosophy onwards, has taken an unprecedented turn, insofar as the initial question, “How and by what means can we access our mind’s components?” fails to coincide with the nonetheless expected question, “How can the subject turn toward itself?” The whole argument of the Private Meditations seeks to avoid the construal of reflection in terms of a return to a pre-existing x. In fact, the gradual elaboration of this question leads, by a series of successive shifts, to its connection with the examination of the philosophical discourse’s claim to validity. How, asks Fichte, can this or that philosopher (particularly Kant or Reinhold) assert what he asserts? How can he “satisfy himself without demonstrations?” (GA II/3:41) Connecting the issue of the specific modalities enabling our access to our minds to the issue of the scientificity of this or that philosopher’s demonstrations: that is the result of the Meditations’s progression. Accordingly, at the end of his investigation, and voicing acriticism—to which he will return over and over again in his later work—whereby Kant’s categories are not logically deduced but outright and arbitrarily asserted, Fichte will understand this criticism as the strict expression of his initial inquiry. The issue of reflection as an inquiry on the possibility of accessing the mind’s components thus transforms in an unprecedented way into an inquiry on the status of the philosopher’s discourse. To engage in a profound reflection and abstraction no longer consists, as it did with Descartes, in operating a return to a pre-existing self. Henceforth, the task of reflection is to clarify the conditions that allow a philosopher to state a certain number of propositions. The topic of reflection thus abandons the sphere of self-observation, of inner experience, to become an inquiry on the legitimacy of philosophical propositions’ claim to validity.

This strict connection of reflection to the status of philosophical discourse will not cease to be asserted, worked, reworked, and deepened in Fichte’s later works. A true breadcrumbs trail, it makes visible their profound continuity. In his Attempt at a New Presentationof the Wissenschaftslehre, discussing the superiority of the Wissenschaftslehre over Kantian criticism, Fichte writes:

Critical Idealism can set to work in two different ways. On the one hand, it may actually derive from the fundamental laws of the intellect the system of the intellect’s necessary modes of acting and, along with this, the objectiverepresentations that come into being thereby. … On the other hand, it may attempt to grasp these same laws in the form in which they are already immediately applied to objects in any particular case; i.e., it may attempt to grasp them at their lowest level (in which case they are called “categories”). (IWL 27 [GA I/4:201])

Fichte’s objection to Kant consists here in asking: “How did you obtain any material acquaintance with these laws?” (IWL 27 [GA I/4:201]). The question, “How could he know?” as a true mantra,Footnote 7 punctuates this decisive text. “How did you become aware that the laws of the intellect are precisely these laws of substantiality and causality?” Fichte asks a few lines later (IWL 27 [GA I/4:201]). In other words, how could Kant know that we have only twelve categories and not thirty? How could he know that these twelve are the only proper ones? Such questions immediately make way for the following: “For I do not yet wish to trouble such an idealist by asking him how he knows that these [categories] are really nothing but immanent laws of the intellect” (IWL 27 [GA I/4:201]).

The progression of the wholeMeditations of 1793–1794 is concentrated, condensed, and intensified in these few lines of the Attempt at a New Presentation. Both of the central theses of the Meditations are further developed here. First of all, to the Kantian focus on the relation between subject and object, Fichte opposes what he calls “the intellect’s necessary modes of acting” (IWL 26 [GA I/4:200]). Accordingly, we move once again from an issue of representation to the problem of reflection. Secondly, the need for a better understanding of the mind’s necessary modalities is not interpreted as a classical demand for introspection. It is not a question of provisionally suspending our belief in the existence of the world in order to observe our own mental activity. The question, “How can we understand these necessary modes of action?” should not be understood as a simple variation of the ancient injunction, “Know thyself.” As in the Meditations of 1793–1794, the question concerning the mind’s components or modes of action is transformed within the Attempt into an inquiry on the status of the philosopher’s discourse. How do we know what we know? Or better yet: How do we know what we claim to know (e.g., that there are twelve categories, that form is necessarily attached to matter, and so on)? The difference between Kant’s “incomplete criticism” and Fichte’s own “well-rounded criticism” is simple: only the latter can provide an answer to the question, “How can you know?” Only Fichte is able to show the conditions of production of his own assertions. Reflection, for Fichte, is thus the philosopher’s ability to justify what he says by showing how he can say it.

As a result, extending the argumentation already in place in theMeditations, theAttempt of 1797–1798 conceives reflection as the process by which a philosopher becomes able to show the conditions of her own knowledge, that is, to conceive the status of her own thought. We thus are far from the traditional notion of a return upon oneself by which the subject, taking herself as the object of knowledge, claims to be able to understand her own logical and mental activity.

This conception of reflection, as it appears in the Attempt at a New Presentationof the Wissenschaftslehre, needs to be further examined, as it clearly summarizes the progression of Fichte’s thought in both hisMeditations of 1793–1794 and his Wissenschaftslehre of1794/1795.

Reflection and Metaphilosophy: How Can We Know that We Know?

Aware of his definition’s novelty, Fichte anticipates a possible rebuttal from “orthodox” Kantians: Wouldn’t they be inclined to suspect dogmatism underneath the question, “How can he know?”—a question which, at first glance, seems to convey the need for a metaphysical foundation, an ultimate authority from which the totality of experience could be deduced. So construed, Fichte’s question would be a prelude to what has been called the “dogmatic turn” in post-Kantian philosophy, which is often perceived as returning, against Kant, to the traditional inquiry into the metaphysical origins and sources of our categories. The Attempt at a New Presentation, however, contains every element necessary to counter such an erroneous objection.

First of all, Fichte clearly states the specific focus of his inquiry: “The Critical idealist … can do no more than assure us that it is the case. Indeed, it is something of a mystery how he himself knows this — if, indeed, he knows it at all” (IWL 28 [GA I/4:202]). The inquiry thus explicitly concerns the nature of Kant’s knowledge, not the metaphysical origins of the categories. It is not an issue of demanding the rational explanation of some fact (e.g., finding the source of the categories or of intuition), but rather of requiring a proper justification of the discourse that claims to reveal a certain fact (e.g., that we have twelve categories and not thirty). The problem therefore is in no way ontological but, etymologically speaking, merely epistemological.Footnote 8 From 1793 to 1813, Fichte never stopped emphasizing this epistemological character of his doctrine, warning the reader against any attempt to interpret it ontologically: “The Wissenschaftslehre is not a doctrine of being” (GA II/15:133). Far from questioning the things themselves, their origins or foundations, Fichte inquires as to the justification of a certain claim to knowledge. The issue is really to know how the philosopher knows what he claims to know.

Fichte, furthermore, clarifies the level to which this inquiry belongs. Indeed, within an inquiry concerning knowledge itself, two levels must be distinguished. The first seeks to settle the very nature of our knowledge: Is it a priori or a posteriori, unrelated to or entirely dependent on experience? To say that our knowledge is grounded only in and on experience amounts to sustaining empiricism, whereas the claim that there exists knowledge that is entirely independent of experience amounts to subscribing to rationalism. However different these stances may be, they nevertheless remain part of the same problematic: the attempt to provide a proper definition of the very nature of our knowledge. Yet the important thing to notice is that Fichte’s main issue does not consist in taking a stance in this debate. His inquiry does not pertain to the existence or nonexistence of a priori knowledge. It pertains to the possibility itself of having a scientific knowledge (Wissen) of the very nature of knowledge (Erkenntnis). This second level of inquiry, which relates to the knowledge of knowledge, must be distinguished from the first by its metaphilosophical dimension. The goal is no longer to question the very structure of our cognitive apparatus (e.g., our intuitions and concepts), but to reflect upon the possibility itself of a knowledge capable of figuring out such a structure. It therefore seems legitimate to assert that the Fichtean inquiry is to the classical epistemological inquiry (on the nature of our knowledge) as the possibility of metalanguage is to the question of language. To ask what language is, how it works (e.g., how it expresses an object), is not the same thing as reflecting upon the possibility of a language capable of figuring out the structure of language itself.

Undoubtedly, the fact that many of Fichte’s contemporaries—and even subsequent commentators—have considered his project as a revival of pre-Critical dogmatism is explained by the fact that they have failed to acknowledge such a distinction. They have taken for a language what was really meant to be an inquiry on the possibility of a metalanguage. The haunting repetition of the injunction, “How can he know?” is aimed to show the difference between these two questions: “How can we know?” and “How can we know that we know?” If, as Kant claims, certain elements of our knowledge are a priori, then the issue, for Fichte, is to know what kind of knowledge is capable of determining the nature of such knowledge.

Thus, for Fichte, the claim to knowledge implied by such assertions as the ones stating that there are twelve categories, two forms of intuition, and so on, needs to be justified. As such, far from being a commanding and transcendent position, the perspective of reflection, as a metaphilosophical inquiry, becomes synonymous with the justification processes of knowledge. But one might ask, nonetheless: Exactly how can we account for our own knowledge? If this does not entail an impossible, external, and transcendent posture, then how can Fichte adequately answer the question, “How can we know that we know?”

Reflection and Self-Referentiality: The Application of a Proposition to Itself

As a summation of the notion of reflection’s very transformation, the question directed to Kant, “How could he know?” is a formal demand concerning every philosopher which requires that they account for their own discourse. The philosopher, in this case Kant, must show “how he knows what he knows.” This is not a matter of exposing the origins of his knowledge, so that, in order to provide an answer, Kant would have to refer to something external to the enunciation of that knowledge. The aim is to force a return to the enunciation itself. This is what the reiteration of the word “knowledge” marks unambiguously in the expression: “The issue is to know how he knows, if and when he knows.” As such, what is required is not a reference ad extra, but a reference to the proposition itself. For Fichte, to say that we have twelve categories is, at the same time and in the same respect, to be able to take into account the conditions of validity of that proposition and to exhibit such conditions conjointly with the enunciation of the proposition itself. Thus the question “how?” implies a reference of the proposition to itself and not an inquiry on its external conditions of emergence. The kinship between this inquiry and the skeptical critique of Kant by Schulze and Maimon is obvious. Indeed, as we know, for these modern skeptics, the definition of validity given by Kant could not apply to itself and therefore nullified itself as soon as it was produced. Kant thinks that there is truth only in a concept applied to an intuition, but this proposition itself is not the application of a concept to an intuition. As such, the proposition becomes self-contradictory. Fichte takes notice of this self-contradiction within the Kantian system as criticized by Schulze and Maimon, and he bases his own thought on the need to avoid such contradictions, which will later be known as pragmatic or performative contradictions.

Accordingly, the question, “How can he know?” requires the calling into question of the proposition’s status itself. In this context, “to return to” the proposition in reflection simply means to show that the proposition does not nullify itself simply through its being stated, as was the case for Kant’s definition of validity. To reflect upon the knowledge of knowledge thus requires that we tackle head-on this unprecedented question regarding the tradition: “How do we know that we know?” Or, to say it otherwise: “How can the philosopher say what he says?” This latter formulation of the question is favored by the Wissenschaftslehreof 1804. As Fichte writes, we have to study Kant “not as the Kantians without exception have studied him (holding on to the literal text…), but rather on the basis of what he actually says, raising oneself to what he does not say but which he must assume in order to be able to say what he does” (WL1804 31 [GA II/8:26–27]). The exclamation of 1797: “If he knows, how can he know?” is thus further specified in 1804 as a demand for the clarification of the presuppositions implicitly granted by the philosopher in order “to allow him to say what he says.” In the above sentences, Fichte clearly states that reflection is an inquiry into a proposition’s claim to validity and aims to spell out the necessary presuppositions enabling the enunciation of such a claim. More to the point, Fichte here reaches the peak of the upheaval initiated in his earlier works: not only is reflection not a return to a pre-existing x, but an inquiry on the status of the philosopher’s discourse; not only is reflection not an observation, but an application of the proposition to itself; but reflection now is also considered as the execution of a certain unprecedented kind of argumentation. Such is the final feature marking the accomplishment of the Fichtean revolution.

From Reflection as Description to Reflection as Argumentation

The argumentative process by which we must move from what the philosopher says to what he does not say but must presuppose in order to say what he says, consists in uncovering the conditions by which a proposition—or a series of propositions—gains meaning, cohesiveness, consistency. Indeed, in any proposition, including within ordinary language, it is possible to go back to the prerequisites which make the proposition intelligible. Accordingly, when joining two notions together and putting them in relation, we are presupposing conditions which are not explicitly stated but remain nonetheless intrinsically tied to our assertion. Such conditions would include, for example, the fact that sufficient reason can be provided to justify the relation of the two notions. For instance, it would not come to anyone’s mind to draw (without explanation) a connection between expressions of the type “the square root of two” and “Pegasus,” since everyone tacitly concurs that these terms are completely irrelevant to each other. It is such conditions, tacitly presupposed “to be able to say what we say,” that Fichte seeks to reveal methodically in every philosophical system, his own as well as those of his adversaries. The process established by Fichte consists quite simply in revealing the undisclosed presuppositions necessarily tied to this or that proposition or series of propositions. Reflection thus implies the disentanglement of the assumptions intrinsically and implicitly attached to a proposition. This method, or argumentative practice, is conceived, in other words, as a disentanglement of the content of what we say. Since reflection disentangles the presuppositions of a proposition in order to reveal its consistency, reflection can be seen as a form of demonstration and justification.

As such, reflection—this central core, unified pattern, and fundamental structure of every Wissenschaftslehre—can be defined positively as an inquiry into the status of the philosopher’s discourse, in opposition to the classical notion of reflection as psychological introspection. As such, it does not belong to the realm of ontology but rather to the field of epistemology—an epistemology, which, in Fichte’s case, would be better described as a meta-epistemology or a metaphilosophical inquiry. Furthermore, if the notion of reflection retains a certain aspect of a “return on,” it is as an application of a proposition to itself, or of the principles of a system to themselves, not as a return to a substantial x (be it the I or a thing). It is not, therefore, through self-observation or self-description that a philosopher can answer the question, “How do we know that we know?” but by means of a certain kind of argumentation consisting in the disentanglement of the presuppositions attached to a philosophical proposition.

This operation of reflection (as argumentation and demonstration) will lead to the unveiling of the principles, concepts, and laws inherent to the knowledge of knowledge. As in any logical demonstration, reflectivity will have a first principle from which the more specific laws of reasoning will be progressively derived. Just as Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics ultimately rest on the law of non-contradiction and discover progressively, from this principle, the multiple rules of argumentation, Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre will likewise build a “logic” or an argumentative method whose foundation will subsequently allow the deployment of an array of complementary truths. The principle in question, which the Wissenschaftslehre of 1813 qualifies as the “permanent” condition of the Wissenschaftslehre (GA II/15:133),Footnote 9 will now serve as the focal point of our analysis.

The Consistency Between Speech and Action

Looking back at the self-contradicting character of the Kantian system, which forced Fichte, under the influence of the skeptics’ critique, to abandon the Kantian position which he had made his own at the beginning of 1793, we can see in this self-contradicting character the initial impetus that engaged Fichte, to rebuild everything, first in his Private Meditations, then in the various presentations of his Wissenschaftslehre. Kant provides a definition of truth (namely, as the bond between a concept and an intuition) that fails to encompass its own philosophical statement and, on the contrary, leaves such a statement out. In other words, the Kantian discourse seeks to say something about truth, but fails to say anything about its own truth. Worse yet, by defining truth as the bond between a concept and an intuition, it expresses, at the same time and in the same respect, its own falseness as a discourse, since its definition is not itself the combination of a concept with an intuition. Kantian criticism, like so many other philosophies, makes the mistake of establishing a foundation that ends up excluding itself, a foundation which leaves itself out of the realm of truths that it sought to establish. In contrast, the first proposition of each Wissenschaftslehre seeks precisely to point out the necessity for any knowledge to be able to establish its own truth as knowledge, for any founding proposition to be able to encompass itself and apply to itself. In fact, Fichte describes under the label of “reflection” or “reflectivity” what will later be known as self-referential judgments. Insofar as certain propositions must include themselves in their own extension, the philosopher who asserts the truthfulness or scientificity of what he says must think it according to a particular mode of relationality: the relation of oneself to itself, the relation of a proposition to itself, of a class to itself, of a system to itself, and so on. In a word, the philosopher must not only and exclusively reflect upon the reference, but also think the self-referentiality.

Fichte will always express this self-referentiality in the same fashion as a congruence, a non-contradiction, or an identity between speech and action. But what exactly is meant by this congruence—which Fichte raised to the level of the highest law of reason—between what we say and what we do? A somewhat trivial example can be helpful in order to understand such a congruence. Indeed, the classical refutation of the skeptical proposition that “there is no truth” rests on such a contradiction between what the skeptic says and what he does. The content of the proposition according to which “there is no truth,” once enunciated, implies that there is at least one true proposition, namely that there is no truth. This enunciation, however, or “what he does” (Tun) (namely, to apparently say something true, by saying that nothing is true) immediately nullifies the content of his proposition, or “what he says” (Sagen).

Fichte will make the need to avoid such contradictions the central core of his system, and at the same time, he will use it as a lever for the discovery of new philosophical propositions. Indeed, the expression “what we say” refers to the content of a philosophical system, namely, the sum of all the propositions by which a philosopher makes claims about truth, knowledge, man, God, nature, existence, and so forth. The expression “what we do,” on the other hand, covers the totality of processes that philosophers implement, as philosophers, in order to be able to articulate a certain content. For example, in the Critique of Pure Reason, what is “said” is the definition of truth as the bond between a concept and an intuition. However, Kant’s action, what is “done,” consists in surreptitiously implying another definition of truth—since his own definition of truth does not connect a concept and an intuition together—which nullifies the content of his proposition. What he says (Sagen) does not as such correspond to what he does (Tun).

The first principle of reflectivity thus amounts to guaranteeing the congruence between the content of what is said and the act of saying itself. It is, as such, a matter of simultaneously taking into account the actual content of a proposition and inquiring into the underlying procedures which enables the enunciation of the proposition. Or, as we see at the beginning of the Wissenschaftslehreof 1804, it is a matter of showing what we must presuppose in order to be able to say what we say (cf. WL1804 31 [GA II/8:26–27]). Fichte never ceased, all throughout his work, to express, in different fashion and forms, this unprecedented principle of reflectivity. His definition of reflection undoubtedly confers unity and consistency upon the different versions of the Wissenschaftslehre, which, for twenty years, Fichte successively exposed, improved, and modified. He describes it as the congruence between what we say (Sagen) and what we do (Tun) in both the Wissenschaftslehre of 1804 and the Attempt at a New Presentationof the Wissenschaftslehre. He describes it still, in his Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, as the congruence between the “occurring [geschehend]” and the “occurrence [Geschehen]” (WL 151 [GA I/2:314–15]). In this context, the purpose is to express the identity between (1) the reciprocal relation of an x and a y as occurring (in which case, for Fichte, “the reflection is confined merely to the possibility of the components involved in the reciprocity” (WL 151 [GA I/2:314])) and (2) the “occurrence of the relation itself.” In this latter case, namely the “occurrence of the relation,” “there is,” for Fichte, “reflection upon this reflection, that of the philosopher upon the nature [die Art] of the observation” (WL 152 [GA I/2:315]). We must, in other words, take into account the action of the philosopher in joining two terms together. Fichte further articulates the principle of reflection through the expression, found at the very end of the theoretical section of the Foundation, of an identity between “what was to be explained” and the “ground of explanation” (WL 190 [GA I/2:356]). It is also very often described by Fichte as the identity between the form and the matter of a proposition. It is expressed at last, in the less technical works such as Some Lectures concerning the Scholar’s Vocation, as the “non-contradiction with oneself” (EPW 149 [GA I/3:15]). Simply put, despite the wide range of formulations, the idea remains the same: the foundation must be this congruence between the enunciation and what is enunciated, the content of a proposition and the act of saying it, the “speech” itself and the “act” of speaking.

A New Identity, a New Logic

This identity that the Wissenschaftslehre seeks to promote is one that Fichte discovers and is the first to posit as the founding principle of his whole system, if not the first to describe.Footnote 10 This kind of non-contradiction or identity is innovative in that it neither relates to a merely formal or logical contradiction, nor to a physical contradiction between two counteracting forces which Kant, following Newton, called “opposition.” It relates even less to the contradiction between a proposition and the given it seeks to convey, as was the case, according to Kant, with dialectical propositions. The contradiction to which Fichte refers is a contradiction between the act of saying x and what is said by x, which we would now call a performative contradiction, in the sense that, for example, the act (Tun, or the “actualizing,” the speech’s form) of enunciating the proposition “I do not speak” contradicts the enunciation’s content (its Sagen or “the actualized,” “the matter of what is said”).

By making this principle the foundation of his system and the model to which every proposition to come will have to conform,Footnote 11 Fichte in fact discovers a new form of logical rationality, which belongs neither to the mathematical reasoning favored by Spinoza (i.e., the deducibility of all propositions from a single principle), nor to the logicism and formal calculus dear to Leibniz, nor even to Cartesian evidence or to the Kantian typology of judgments. In a word, this new figure of rationality does not fall into any of the previous modes of referring to an object by means of a proposition that have existed throughout the history of philosophy.

This utterly innovative character of theWissenschaftslehre is constantly highlighted by Fichte. In 1797, in his Attempt at a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre, he stresses this:

To state my own position as plainly as possible: I am not concerned to rectify nor to bring to completion any set of philosophical concepts that may already be in circulation—be they “anti-Kantian” or “Kantian.” Instead, I desire to uproot current conceptions completely and to accomplish a complete revolution in the way we think about these issues. (IWL 5 [GA I/4:184])

And just in case his readership would have failed to notice this opening sentence, in which Fichte claims that his project is neither a tributary to nor an attempt to clarify any previous philosophy, including Kantian criticism, he goes further, by saying: “The entire structure and meaning of the Wissenschaftslehre is completely different from that of any of the philosophical systems that have preceded it” (IWL 36 [GA I/4:209]). We find a similar claim for a radical break with prior philosophy in the Wissenschaftslehreof 1804, which “transposed us into an entirely new world” (WL1804 73 [GA II/8:126–27]). This novelty and remoteness from traditional knowledge will be further asserted in the very first lecture of the Wissenschaftslehre of 1813:

In every knowledge other than the Wissenschaftslehre, we usually settle for simple knowledge: this knowledge is consumed by the very being in front of it. In the Wissenschaftslehre, on the contrary, a new knowledge must go beyond this knowledge stuck into itself; in the Wissenschaftslehre, knowledge is itself what a new knowledge is aware of. (GA II/15:133)

The idea of the Wissenschaftslehre is the idea of a new knowledge. But in what way does this somewhat simple principle—formulated as the congruence between the philosopher’s action and speech—upset the meaning of the philosophical concepts actually in use? In what way is he capable of making a new kind of knowledge, a new form of rationality, emerge?

A New Definition of Rationality

First of all, Fichte’s principle of reflectivity produces a clear realignment of truth’s very definition. Truth is no longer the correspondence between propositions and things, but becomes the congruence between the form and content of a proposition, which is the only way to establish the adequacy of reason to itself. With this first principle, Fichte possesses an operating criterion capable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood in philosophy. Any proposition or system contravening this necessary congruence between the speech and the act, between the content of a philosophical system and the act of enunciating it, will be false. We thus grasp the extent of the difference between Kant’s definition of truth and Fichte’s. If, for Kant, reason is doomed to go astray in endless antinomies, it is because it uses concepts when no intuition whatsoever is given. On the contrary, for Fichte, the greatest contradiction of reason is the performative contradiction: the question is not whether or not our concepts apply to an intuited given, but in the end, whether we can, as philosophers, articulate properly the content and status of our propositions. Accordingly, if I assert the following proposition: “The source of self-consciousness is being” (or God, nature, language, or the will to power), then the philosopher’s task will be to show how such a proposition is also a product of being (or God, or nature, and so forth). Otherwise, there cannot be congruence between what the philosopher says and what he does. There would be, as Fichte writes in his Wissenschaftslehre of 1804: “a contradiction between what they assert in their principles and what they actually do” (WL1804 141 [GA II/8:288]).

The law of reflection thus promotes philosophy to the level of a science and meets the requirement, often expressed by Fichte, to make of philosophy a science that would equal geometry in terms of evidence. This requirement still has to be properly understood: the issue is not for philosophy to mimic the procedures of mathematics, because the kind of rationality at work in both fields is not the same. Geometry builds up figures, and once this construction is made, analyzes them. Philosophy, on the other hand, does not aim for an external object which would circumscribe the limits of representation. Its truth arises from the conformity between the content of a speech and the act of saying it. It is a logic of action, rather than of being.

Going beyond the traditional definition of truth, this law of reflection also upsets the traditional philosophical notion of identity. The identity produced by Fichte’s philosophy is not logical identity, the highest law of formal logic. It is an accordance between “what we say” and “what is presupposed in order to say what we say,” between the speech and what it says, or between what John Searle or Karl-Otto Apel will later call the propositional content and the illocutionary force, speech and act, Sagen and Tun. It is this kind of identity which, as the highest law of reflectivity, constitutes the permanent foundation of the Wissenschaftslehre.

The whole system, the totality of allowed propositions will have to conform to this principle of reflection. To retain this or that particular proposition within the system will imply a previous demonstration that it was bereft of any performative contradiction. It is this type of “action” that Fichte wishes to rethink; it is by means of this sort of “act” that he wants to show the contradiction that can arise between what we say and the act of saying it. In other words, if a philosophy, in its content (be it an account of self-consciousness, science, truth, knowledge, morals, or what have you), cannot account for the act of saying such a content, it condemns itself to fall into serious contradictions. Accordingly, if Fichte rejects Spinoza’s philosophy, this is not, as some imply, because it would negate the very possibility of freedom or morality, but because this philosophy is intrinsically false, insofar as its propositions’ content is negated by their enunciation. As the Wissenschaftslehre of 1813 recalls:

The Wissenschaftslehreis not a doctrine of being. It would be one only by misunderstanding. The most famous doctrine of being is Spinoza’s. But precisely, he didn’t return to the formation, to the thinking. … On the contrary, with the Wissenschaftslehre, the return on knowledge, the self-consciousness, is a permanent condition, and the return on ourselves is the instrument of a method that is confirmed by rules. The Wissenschaftslehre: a pure setting apart of being. (GA II/15:133)

From the Private Meditations of 1793 to the final presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte thus never ceased to follow the same track: the model of reflection as a knowledge of knowledge, with everything this implies: the principle of pragmatic non-contradiction, a logic of action rather than of being, and a revolution in the very way we philosophize.

Conclusion: Fichte and the Dawn of Reflectivity

From the Private Meditations (1793) to the Wissenschaftslehre of 1794/1795, from the Attempt at a New Presentation (1797–1798) to the Wissenschaftslehre of 1804, and from the latter to the 1813 exposition, the Wissenschaftslehre presents itself as what one might call an analytic ofreflectivity: an analytic, in that it breaks down to the constitutive elements and principles without which reflection cannot be understood; an analytic of reflectivity, in that what must be understood from the outset is not the object (as in the Kantian analytic) but the “understanding of understanding,” the “knowledge of knowledge.” This reiteration of notions, this recurrence, is conveyed in 1794 by the expression “reflection of reflection” itself, and later by “reflectivity,” which is favored by Fichte in the Wissenschaftslehre of 1812 and 1813. It reveals a possibility—the highest possibility—of human reason. This reflectivity is defined by a series of original characteristics. First, it is opposed to the notion of Kantian representation, but this does not mean that it is merely a revival of the concept of reflection found in Descartes, Locke, or Leibniz. Fichte’s notion of reflection can be positively determined as a questioning of the status of the philosopher’s discourse and, as such, clearly occupies a metaphilosophical level, as an inquiry into the conditions and actions implied in any discourse claiming to be true. Furthermore, reflection is self-referential, in that it is an application of a proposition or of a system to itself. As such, it is not merely an internal eye that would observe, from a perspective that arises out of nowhere, a subsisting x (be it the I or a thing). It is thus not through inner observation and description that a philosopher can resolve the question, “How can we know that we know?” but through a certain kind of argumentation. Neither introspection nor description, reflection is argumentation, a new form of transcendental method. This logic of action and actualization is the central core of the various Wissenschaftslehren and ensures their consistency. The Wissenschaftslehre is thus not a doctrine of being, of the world, or of consciousness, but, as the name suggests, “a science of science”: a science of the philosophical discourse in its pretension to describe being, the world, consciousness, or the constituted sciences. Such is the analytic of reflectivity whose absolute foundation is the non-contradiction between speech and action, the Archimedean point from which Fichte undertook to rebuild everything.

Translated by Emmanuel Chaput